What Dreams May Come
by InfinitusX
Summary: Black coming down like the tide, like rain, spotting vision, erasing the painful light... It's not so bad. It's only a dream, it's only dying, but it's not so bad at all.


**What Dreams May Come**

Genre: drama/tragedy

Rating: T, because I've decided I like the letter

Characters/Pairing: M, M, hints of pairing

Disclaimer: not mine.

Notes: There was a comic I saw on deviantART by the deviant known as Slinkers. This is a similar concept, except I think I took a rather darker road. Just something to tide you over until I can get my collection of music pieces put in some semblance of order.

Language Notes: Third person present. Self-beta'ed, as per usual.

-

_Screech of tires. Burning white light, harsh, painful. Smell of melting rubber, ruined tires. Too bad. Inhale smoke, bittersweet and final. Oh well. Crunch of concrete under heavy boots, solid ground, harsh lights, harsh smoke, harsh voices yelling. Cold air hits lungs just before hot metal does. Like being the butter cut by the knife. Like being under the drill bit, the saw, no anesthesia, just pain, just heat, just nerves screaming as they expire. Like dying._

_Dying. Hurts. So bad. Black coming down in a dizzying swoop, final curtain for the last empty, meaningless act before a theatre where the audience has all gone home. Black coming down like the tide, like rain, spotting vision, erasing the painful light. _

_It's not so bad._

He wakes up and stares into the darkness for a long blank second, chilled and shivering.

"Just a dream," he says aloud to the empty room, and the sound of his own voice reminds him that he never does this, that he's never let a dream affect him like this before. Just a dream. Yeah. It's gone. His room is dark, only the glow of the moon peeking in through the curtains lighting the room. He gets up, goes over to it, pushes the curtains aside roughly, and stares at the night. It's peaceful, out here. Reassuring. It's ridiculous, but it's true.

It's hard to believe, but he can't sleep. Not after that. He pushes away from the window, leaving the curtains wide, and quietly shuts his door behind him as he pads into the hallway.

The building is hushed, silent, all the children asleep for the night, as he should be, as he rarely ever is, but was tonight. He isn't thinking, just walking, and perhaps it's not a surprise that he finds himself standing in front of a familiar door, and feeling in his pocket for the bent paperclip he always carries with him. It's innocuous, and perfect for picking locks, which he does in just under a minute, a new record, hand steady for all that the strange giddy coldness of the dream is still upon him.

The door swings open, silently, and he glides in, shuts it behind him, hoists himself onto the desk and watches.

Matt's sleeping - restlessly, but he's sleeping - and Mello is almost violently jealous of him and his innocence, god damn him, why does he hang out with an innocent kid who doesn't understand, who would never understand the meaning of sacrifice?

He doesn't know.

He practically springs off the desk and attaches himself to the ceiling when Matt suddenly sits bolt upright, wide awake, gasping and shuddering before burying his face in his hands, rubbing at the sleep there, rumpling over-long red bangs.

"Just a dream," he whispers, and the echo of Mello's own words is too much. He slides off the desk and joins his friend on the bed, silently. He has a feeling that Matt comes _this close_ to pissing himself in fright.

"Mello, what the hell are you doing here?!" he whisper-yelps, batting furiously at Mello as he settles himself right in close. He likes to invade Matt's personal bubble, because Matt hates it. He swears it's the only reason, has nothing to do with the fact that Matt gives up with a soft sigh like a puppy or a small child, and he can feel the moment he gives in, resigned, to the contact, when he folds and the tension just leaks out of him.

"Bad dream?" he asks, instead of answering. "Want to talk about it?"

Matt likes to talk about his dreams, god knows why. He says it's when he does his best thinking, when he's been sleep-deprived for days and then goes to sleep, and the answer to the problem he was trying to solve always seems to be sitting there in his head, quietly, put together by the combined efforts of unconsciousness and subconsciousness, when he wakes up.

"It wasn't so bad," Matt says. "I hurt, though. And I didn't know why. Just in my chest. I was driving somewhere, in this huge-ass truck, and someone was watching me from behind, but I couldn't turn around and look because I didn't want that person to know that I knew what they were doing. There was a church, huge and old and broken; I turned off and drove inside and then there was pain, pain, and I don't know where it was coming from. Everything was fading away, but there were bright flares of orange light, fire I think, and I smelled burning human flesh. And I was panicking, because I needed to get out, but I couldn't move. I thought that maybe I was already dead, and that was why I couldn't move. And I wouldn't have woken up so suddenly like that if I hadn't noticed your rosary dangling in front of my fading vision.... I think I dreamt I was you. Fucking scary."

They sit in silence for awhile, Matt tilting towards him, barely noticeable, eyes drooping every now and then. Scared or not, Matt has probably not had a decent night's sleep in at least a week, and it's taken its toll on him whether he likes it or not.

"So why did you come visiting in the middle of the night?" Matt says, shaking himself upright. "'S not exactly something you normally do, Mello."

"I had a nightmare as well," Mello admits, dropping his forehead to his knees. "It was... similar."

"You dreamt you were dying as well?"

"No. Well, yes, except I wasn't me, and I was cornered like a rat, and then I was being shot... again, and again, and again."

Matt shifts beside him, uncomfortable and ill at ease. "Whoa. That's pretty harsh." Silence for a long moment. "... Who were you?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Mello snaps, turning away. Matt doesn't get it. He thinks in terms of video games, sometimes, of a fade-to-black meaning simply 'Game over. Restart? Y/N.' He doesn't always understand that death is death. Maybe it's because he didn't have to watch his own parents die, like Mello did, because Matt's parents just abandoned him and disappeared. They could still be alive, somewhere. Mello has no hope for that sort of ending. Dead is dead. Gone is gone, and there's never any return.

"You know it's just a dream. Saying it won't make it real." He nudges him with one shoulder. "Come on, Mel, I told you that I dreamt of you dying. How bad could it be? It's just a dream. It doesn't mean anything. Tell me."

"No. _Fuck._"

"I'm going to guess until I get it right, then," Matt says. "Was it me?"

Mello can't lie and say it wasn't. Matt knows him too well, even when he tries to hide things. Especially when he tries to hide things. "So it was you," he says, turning his face away, instead of pretending he doesn't remember.

"And you came to make sure it was all a dream?" Matt chuckles. Mello could kill him - no. No, he couldn't really, could he? Anyone else, but not Matt. Not when he felt how much it will hurt his ally - his... friend... to die. "That was nice of you. Worrying like that."

"I wasn't worried," Mello snaps. "I couldn't sleep so I decided to come torment you instead."

"You were worried." He can hear the smile in Matt's voice as he nudges his shoulder with his own again. "It's OK to say so, Mel. Hell, I probably would have headed for your room if you hadn't already been in here when I woke up. Chill. We're friends, aren't we? It's natural to worry."

"Like fuck we are," Mello growls. Matt sighs, doesn't push the matter any farther. He's lying down now, wriggling over closer to the wall.

"I'm tired," he says, and lies down on the far edge of the bed, against the wall, leaving more than half of it for Mello to remain sitting on. "You can go if you want."

Mello knows that's more of an invitation to stay than an invitation to leave. Fucking Matt, thinking he needs to be close, to feel the comfort of another human presence, in order to sleep again. He's sliding down under the covers beside the other boy in spite of himself. It's not because he wants to. It's because it's warm, and he's more tired than he thought he was, and it's also really, really late. That's all.

"It was only a dream," Matt mumbles, turning over, dropping one warm limp hand down on Mello's arm for a second before curling up, breathing steadily and evenly. "Dreams don't come true."

-

When Mello sees the red car skidded out in the intersection, pocked with bullets, on the miniature television screen in the truck, he feels it in the pit of his stomach, hears an echo of that distant childish voice murmuring comforting lies. How could he have known? How could either of them have known? Blood pools below the door, blackening under the high-intensity beams of headlights.

Fuck. Fuck, Matt, sometimes dreams do come true, because life's a bitch and she wants to watch you writhe, to take everything from you before granting you the reprieve of death. His chest hurts, as does his throat, tight and unpleasant, thick with choking... guilt? Unhappiness? Hate?

_I didn't think you would really die like this, Matt. I'm so sorry._

He keeps driving. He doesn't dare look behind him, even though he knows he's being watched by the woman in the back, that little bitch - she's waiting for him to stop somewhere safe, and then she's going to kill him. He knows this. Hell, he remembers it. Matt told him, once long ago, and the horror of the ignomious death has stayed with him, even when he's forgotten other, perhaps more important things. Fuck it. Her men got Matt shot down like a dog, like he'd dreamed it, so long ago, he remembers the pain of unreal bullets slicing through him, remembers, wonders how much worse the reality was, if it even seemed like reality. A heart attack seems such a small thing to suffer, after that.

_What dreams may come_, he wonders, as his chest seizes up with a pain worse than heartache, _when we shuffle off this mortal coil?_ _Do we dream? Or is there only nothingness?_

The last thing he sees is the cross of his rosary dangling before him as he collapses on the steering wheel, and he thinks, remembers: _It's time to wake up._

Night falls like rain, and he drowns in the ensuing flood.

-


End file.
